The Wounded Generation: Coming Home After World War II

Please note: Due to the shutdown of the federal government, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, a National Archives facility, is closed. Check archives.gov for details. This program, hosted by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, is now exclusively a virtual program. More information.

Drawing from veterans’ memoirs, oral histories, and government documents, acclaimed historian David Nasaw illuminates a hidden chapter of American history—one of trauma, resilience, and a country in transition in The Wounded Generation: Coming Home After World War II. Discrimination toward returning Black veterans, the skewed benefits of the GI Bill, limited understanding of PTSD, and pressures on women who had begun working outside the home during the war, are just some of the unacknowledged realities the veterans - and the nation - faced. Nasaw discusses this complicated portrait of those who brought the war home with them, among whom were some of the period’s most influential political and cultural leaders, including John F. Kennedy, Kurt Vonnegut, Harry Belafonte, and Jimmy Stewart. Chad Williams, Boston University professor of history and African American and Black Diaspora studies, moderates.